Even in this case, however, prudence must play a role. For when a government decides to pursue a former official of another government, war and peace may be on the line.⁴ Not only might tension be increased and violence result within one country or the other, but there could even be violence between the countries. The decision to hunt down alleged war criminals in the Balkans is an act of state, a political decision, as would be the decision to punish Yasir Arafat for his involvement in terrorism over the years, or to seek the extradition of General Pinochet. It is notable, in the Pinochet case, that the government of Spain has never approached the government of either Chile or England to ask for custody of the general. The entire matter is the work of a single judge, whose grasp of the possible consequences—on Chilean political life, on Spanish-Chilean or British-Chilean relations, or on the efforts of other societies to quiet the demons that have led them to bitterness and strife—may be poor, or who may think such consequences irrelevant to his zeal for justice. Many have cheered him on, whether because their politics lead them to hate Pinochet or because they too believe that the consequences are irrelevant in the context of a human-rights case.

But such consequences cannot be irrelevant. This point has been clearly grasped by the Vatican, and in a message to the British government meant to be confidential Pope John Paul II argued that proceeding against Pinochet could disrupt democracy in Chile and upset national reconciliation there. The Pope also argued that Pinochet should be allowed to return home on humanitarian grounds. The House of Lords' decision on March 24 permits but does not require Pinochet's extradition, and puts his case where it belongs: in the hands of Britain's political and foreign-policy authorities, who must take a broader view than its judges about the impact of the Pinochet case. The judges' opinions discuss Pinochet's immunity or lack of it as a former head of state (see the excerpts on page 6), but they do not take into account any other consequences—for relations between Chile, Spain, and England, and more importantly for stability and democracy in Chile. The judges did not, because they could not, weigh anything but law and agreed facts on the scales of justice.

But in the international political system, peace is at least as much a goal as justice. Within most societies, democracy, peace, and national reconciliation may at times be more pressing goals than justice. The proper ordering or balancing of these goals is the invaluable and extremely difficult work of statesmen and of democratic political leaders—of the Washingtons and the Lincolns, the Gandhis and the Mandelas, the Havels and the De Gaulles, when we are lucky enough to find them. These leaders too sought justice, but they understood that the rules of life and politics in the history of a nation are far more complex than those of the courtroom.

Let us "bind up the nation's wounds," Lincoln said at the end of our country's civil war, and that is the task before any nation emerging from division, bloodshed, or oppression. The people who lived in the ruins and are now rebuilding must be allowed to decide how to deal with the claims of history and the demands of justice, and to insist that the need to bind up wounds takes precedence over filling the jails.